The Immigration Department says it is working on a border management system that will allow holders of Zimbabwean e-passports as well as travellers from SADC countries with e-passports to walk into Zimbabwe through a scanner on an electronic gate without queuing or the involvement of an immigration official.
While giving oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce, Immigration Principal Officer Oscar Chitsa stated that the new e-passport system will help to eliminate bottlenecks and delays, ultimately enhancing the ease of doing business in the country.
The committee chaired by Buhera South MP, Ngoni Mudekunye (ZANU PF), wanted to know what the Border Efficiency Management Committee was doing to address delays by both cargo and passengers at some points of entry and exit. Said Chitsa (via The Herald):
We are working on a new border management system, which we will be launching this year and will provide efficiency at points of entry.
We will introduce e-gates. I can confirm Harare will have a minimum of four of these. These will cater for our nationals and those from Sadc with e-passports.
It means the immigration counters we currently have will now serve foreigners, from outside Sadc and those without e-passports.
Those holding new passports will no longer need to go through the immigration officials. That will bring efficiency at our borders.
He said the rollout will start with busy entry points such as Harare, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls, Beitbridge and Chirundu.
Chitsa also said the Immigration Department had introduced electronic visa applications, and e-permits and have digitised records and information systems to minimise delays. He said:
We have a visa system in which everyone coming to Zimbabwe requiring visas will apply while still in their home country to avoid bottlenecks at the point of entry.
The e-visas will see our visitors apply for visas online while in their home country before travelling. The system is already functioning.
You will also realise that our system has a lot of paperwork that was also causing delays. To deal with that we will introduce online forms to get away with the paper-based system.
On December 14, 2021, President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially launched Zimbabwe’s new e-passport and said that the introduction of this advanced document aligned with the government’s vision of modernising the economy through the application of cutting-edge information and communications technology (ICT) systems.
An e-passport, also known as a biometric passport, is a type of passport that contains electronic information about the passport holder.
E-passports contain a small, embedded computer chip that stores the passport holder’s personal information, biometric data, and a digital copy of the passport photo.
The chip in an e-passport typically stores biometric identifiers such as a digital photograph, fingerprints, or iris scans of the passport holder. These biometric data points help to verify the identity of the passport holder.
The embedded chip and biometric data make e-passports much harder to forge or counterfeit compared to traditional paper passports.
This improves border security and helps combat identity theft and passport fraud.
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